Paul-Albert Besnard was a student of the academic painter Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889), won the prix de Rome in 1874 and was among the founders of the Société Nationale in 1890.
Throughout his career his style remained in between academic and impressionistic.
During the last thirty years of his life he held important positions in the Académie de France in Rome, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Académie française, the Académie de Saint Luc and the Royal Academy. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art